Those words—reminiscent of the response
attributed to John Paul Jones when queried if he was prepared to surrender his
ship to the British (“I have not yet begun to fight”)—were uttered by Los
Angeles attorney Joseph Scott after the jury had reported it was hopelessly
deadlocked at the first trial of a paternity action against actor Charlie
Chaplin and a mistrial was declared. Scott’s response is quoted in an
Associated Press dispatch on the day the jurors threw up their arms, Jan. 5,
1945.

Fight, Scott had. His summation, as related here
last week, was an invective-filled harangue against the silent film star, a
notorious rake. The lawyer—a leader of the Catholic laity and a high-level
Republican advisor—was probably as much spurred to action against Chaplin by virtue
of the defendant’s far-left wing politics as he was by the actor’s nonchalant
immorality.

Fight, Scott would. At 77, his energies were
high, his commitment to winning that case keen.

Even great actors and actresses—including Helen
Hayes—have suffered from stage fright. Chaplin developed “witness box fright.”

Joyce Milton, in her 1998 book, “Tramp: The Life
of Charlie Chaplin,” notes:

“Joe Scott’s cross-examination upset Chaplin
deeply, [son] Charles junior believed that his father was never really the same
afterward.”

She writes that he “could not bring himself to
go through the ordeal of being cross-examined by Joe Scott again”—and errantly
says he didn’t testify.

He did, but clearly did not want to.

The April 10, 1945 issue of the Los Angeles
Times reports that Scott, the previous day, advised Los Angeles Superior Court
Judge Clarence L. Kincaid that when his investigator located Chaplin on the
tennis court of his home and tried to serve him with a subpoena to testify, the
comedian “ran like a scared jack rabbit” into the house. The investigator was
then told, according to Scott, that Chaplin wasn’t at home.

“With gestures and intonation suggestive of his screen roles,”
an Associated Press dispatch on April 12 reports, Chaplin testified. He
had spurned actress Joan Berry’s demand—at a time when she was pregnant—for a
$150,000 pay-off…on penalty of his being named the father if he did not
acquiesce, according to the account of Chaplin’s testimony. The actor portrayed
himself as brave, resisting in the face of the prospect of adverse publicity,
knowing that “95 per cent of the press” was against him based on his political
views.

Do you remember on “Perry Mason,” the defense
lawyer questioned witnesses while hovering before them, right in front of the
witness box? It seemed to defy reality. Yet, the April 13, 1945 issue of the
Times shows Scott so close to Chaplin that if either had garlic on his breath,
the other would know it. Scott has his hand on the witness box, a few inches
from Chaplin’s fingers.

According to the accompanying article:

“Most of the 55-year-old comedian’s answers were
confined to “I did not,’ ‘I don’t remember’ and emphatic ‘certainly nots’ in
replying to questions linking him with intimacies with Miss Berry, his former
dramatics protege.”

Scott worked a miracle at that trial. Notwithstanding that
Chaplin absolutely was not the father, the verdict was against him. The truth
was that the mother had type A blood; the child, 14-month-old Carol Ann Berry,
had type B blood. That meant the true father had type AB or type B blood—not
type O, which Chaplin had.

There was appellate action ahead. Scott, who had
taken on the case with no agreement by the unmonied unwed mother to compensate
him, would get court-ordered payment from Chaplin…a Court of Appeal justice
(who went on to serve on the California Supreme Court) would revile at the
result in light of the blood test results…a statute would be enacted to prevent
future findings of paternity contrary to uncontradicted scientific findings.